The Darkest Year Yet
by pastelPLUNDER
Summary: If he's being honest with himself, it's probably not going to get better. OS


AN: Hey so this is my take on the thing, I own nothing.

* * *

Morty remembers his 13th birthday explicitly. Clings to the memory obsessively, lovingly goes over all the details in not only his darkest but his finest hours.

The party had been everything he asked for.

Not having grown out of the eager excitement unique to a child, Morty remembers waking up early, squirming and shifting in his bed waiting for the rest of the family to get up as well.

He remembers the family breakfast, mom and dad holding hands and laughing, Jerry retelling childhood stories for the millionth time, Beth fantasizing about where life may yet take him. Summer smirking, nudging, poking fun at his "blooming manhood" and not being able to wipe the smile off of his face.

The party started around noon and was no grand affair. A few of Morty's friends came by and his mother made a buttercream frosting cake and called him her special boy. Mary, a girl two years older and more Summer's friend than his own, had blushed and pulled him aside while the rest of the group remained in the living room. Morty remembered hearing shrieks of laughter, talking and the sound of Shane, more Morty's friend than Summer's, loudly humming along to the Mario Party theme. Most of all he remembers the sticky-soft feel of Mary's lips, sticky with a glittering, strawberry, pink lip gloss Morty hadn't been able to tear his eyes away grin since she'd arrived and soft in a way he was later convinced could only be achieved by a girl. He knows he kissed back sloppily and he thinks he pushed a little too hard because in the next moment she's lightly pushing him away, giggling with a string of spit connecting her lip to his. He comes back with a flushed face that only Shane and Marcus point out, giving him pokes and asking for all the details later. They snicker and slant their eyes at Mary and Morty punches them both in the arm, nervously scratching the back of his neck.

He remembers winning at Smash Bros, remembers the water balloon fight at high noon and the obligatory singing later in the night while he blows out the candles.

He really remembers Rick showing up in the dead of night 5 months later and his mother's screams.

He is wary at first. It melts away at Beth's pure, overwhelming happiness and when he sees her clinging to the older man's side he takes it as a good sign, his mother was a smart woman after all. He is ecstatic when Rick asks for his help and shows him a whole new world. He feels life may be at its peak.

Problems do begin to surface. His parents first fight. First really, really bad fight.

Slamming doors, angry stomps, he can't remember what started it but it's about Rick. The man himself sits in the living room looking above it all but for the ghost of a smile on his lips.

But he starts to crack when he is first introduced to the brand new idea of him being useless, a moron, a tool, a byproduct of a (news to him) loveless marriage. His and Summers origin story hits where it hurts. Maybe he'd rather not know exactly how his loving family got started.

The cracks are there when people stop coming over, friends drop off the radar, his parents don't sit next to each other, his father seems weak, Summer seems distant and Beth seems desperate. But Morty discovers he can ignore all this by having Rick's witty sarcasm fill the silence and by leaving the house to traverse the universe.

But when the excitement of the unknown wears down, and when the things he sees becomes too much, he looks at his family and looks in the mirror and acknowledges the source of the problem.

What to do but cling to an old memory of sweet lips and bright candles and go with the old man once more?

Rick goes away for awhile and nothing gets better. The problem has spread to everyone and the problems of the family are magnified ten fold. Without his rose colored glasses and with the new developments, Morty feels ten times more guilty for missing the son of a bitch as much as he does. He thinks for the first time that he might be broken.

Rick comes back and it all changes. Morty's so angry and worried he can hardly breathe, but his mother is happy again and Summer's idolization fades away. He doesn't really know how Jerry is, he just accepts the new family structure.

And yet he still sees his mother as desperate and he still sees his father as weak and Summer's become more isolated if anything.

Problems obviously arise, as they always do, but this time hope comes forth in the form of Dr. Wong. For almost a year the idea of a fix seemed impossible. All of a sudden it seems within reach, a way for his family to be okay again. It's not.

As they drive away from the therapist's of ice he notices that Summer is cracked beside him. He wonders, over the sound of his mother's dependency in the front seat, if he'll ever feel as light as he did that one beautiful night when he was 13. Or as high as his first day with Rick.

* * *

AN: This kinda wrote itself but shoot me a comment on what you wanna see in the future or any thoughts, K?


End file.
